


the trick of it is

by simplyprologue



Category: The Newsroom (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 14:18:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>...don't be afraid anymore.</i> Or, five other ways Will and MacKenzie could have gotten back together before Election Night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the trick of it is

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** This was supposed to be a short little piece of five drabbles that would tie together nicely, developed at a moment of time where I clearly forgot how incapable I am of writing short things. So instead it grew into this monster. Thanks to everyone who was standing by while I rambled manically on my tumblr how long it was taking me to do this. And to my Newsroom Anon whose enthusiasm pressed me to finish this after putting it down a couple of times over the past week. Title and inspiration taken largely from the "Demons" and "Bible Belt" sequence by Dry the River. 
> 
> Each AU is supposed to inform the others in it's own way, so they're all connected. And each is written from a point of view, and I think we both know by now that Will and Mac are unreliable narrators in their own ways. Also part iv. is dedicated to Claire. She knows why.
> 
> Trigger warnings for suicide ideation, alcohol abuse, and child abuse.

**April 2008  
** **(He reads her emails.)**

He reads the emails.

The next month finds him with his feet on the ground for a special report from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, and he sees her for the first time in nine months.

She's been here for five. She's thinner, exhaustion stamped under her eyes, hair longer and unkempt.

Gravel crunches under her boots when she steps down out of a jeep, half an eye on a notebook someone has shoved under her nose, listening to three people nattering off at once. It's hot as fuck, and there's a patina of sweat and dust and grit from the road covering her and the people embarking from the caravan; a grab-bag of reporters and marines who she smiles and half-waves to as they head inside the base.

Will immediately regrets how much he drank on the flight over.

Some fleet-footed kid is at her heels, and through her tiredness Mac manages a smile at the mop-headed adolescent, and Will feels a surge of regret for everything that has led him—them, really—to this moment. He had no idea how to do this over the phone, or via email… or in person, and he realizes now that he's spent the past thirty seconds or so gaping at her. But he can't have flown halfway across the world for nothing, and goddamn she's beautiful.

_That has to be Jim Harper_ , he thinks, when she trails her hand down the kid's arm, fondly squeezing his wrist before breaking off from the pack of embeds heading towards… well, somewhere, because he's only arrived on base a few hours before and has no idea where the fuck anything is, except that MacKenzie is here and he needs to find MacKenzie and he needs to apologize to MacKenzie and needs to tell MacKenzie that he loves her.

(Her entire life is passing him by, and she's narrating it, in her emails. This is him, walking back into her life. He has no idea how this is going to work.)

Except that now that he's found Mac, through almost no effort of his own, he has no idea how to progress to the Next Logical Steps.

It had been late, a little over a month ago, after the show and well into the time of night where he would sit on his balcony, self-loathing and alcohol-sweat and cigarette smoke deep in his pores. A report of two reporters killed in an IED explosion in the Kandahar region, a man and a woman, had come down the wire, and he realized (less _realized_ , more like that a bunch of tiny incremental decisions came to a huge sort of consequence all at once, and he couldn't remember how to breathe) that he had deleted all of her voicemails, even the ones from before the breakup, and if it was _her_ , his MacKenzie, with her brain matter splattered across a windshield on foreign soil, that he would never hear her voice again and it was almost enough for Will to pitch himself over the railing and down onto the Tribeca pavement. Instead, desperation, half a bottle of Johnnie Walker Green Label, and that realization had lead him to the hidden folder in his inbox where gmail had funneled all her emails so he wouldn't even have to see them.

By the time that the AP could confirm the identities of the reporters some five hours later, he had read them all, and finished the bottle (which of those first, Will isn't entirely certain, although one may have fueled the other) and, limbs numb, eyes stinging, mouth something like sandpaper, he had curled up on the balcony floor, a cold September morning wrapping itself around him while he went numb with fear and regret and _holy god he's fucked this up too_ _and now she's in a fucking warzone he's driven her to go off into a fucking warzone what if she dies._

He laid there for a few hours, drinking and chain-smoking in his pajamas, booze and smoke and stomach acid burning his throat like self-immolation.

He wanted to go to see her _right that moment_ , wanted her to be tangible and under his fingertips and real, not just a byline or a credit at the end of a broadcast. He's shivering, even though he's burning hot and hungover and about to throw up and—

He needed to see her right that minute, was gonna fuck it up otherwise. He'd _already_ fucked it up. (She had too, but in the light of well, a lot of things, maybe they could work that one out between the two of them.)

Charlie had approved for _News Night with Will McAvoy_ to make a special report from Afghanistan in an alarmingly short amount of time, and suddenly everything was a flurry of logistics and flights and military clearance, the undercurrent of it all being a pulse of _MacKenzie MacKenzie MacKenzie_ under his skin and it didn't occur to him until halfway through the flight over that he hadn't heard from Mac in over two weeks (not that he… replied to her emails, but he definitely _read_ them as they came in) and that she might not want to see him. Maybe she'd moved onto some raging, Will-hating phase of the post-break up… whatever.

And now… here she is. Twenty feet away from him, and Will can't get his feet to move an inch further, even though _MacKenzie MacKenzie MacKenzie_ is still the thrum in his ears, under the delicate skin at his wrists, the place on his neck that she had found, and it sweeps over him like the tide, the miles and months between them. She's beautiful, he thinks, is all he can think, his MacKenzie is beautiful and twenty feet away, with wind in her hair, worrying her lower lip between her teeth and the sun is yellow on her skin and he wants to touch her, brush the lock of hair plastered to her cheek behind her ear and whisper apologies into her skin.

She sees him, then, his name half-formed on her lips and he's rooted, still, probably dumbstruck and shock slides across her features. And then his feet carry him to her, at last, even though he still has no fucking clue what he's going to say to her.

Her brow furrows. "What in the fuck is happening—" she begins, then stops, changing directions, "Will, _what the fuck_?"

All he can think about is there's a cut—a gash, really, an ugly, uneven thing—on her left forearm and that he's never seen her in combat boots before.

"I read the emails," he says, and he still doesn't have a plan, not really, except that he's followed her here. "Your emails, I mean, and not—I read them a month ago, I was— _I'm an ass_."

Mac stutters out another _What the fuck?_ but doesn't turn away, and he has half a mind to grab her shoulders, so he does.

"There was…" No. " _A month ago_ , those two reporters who were killed, here, and they didn't release the names and I was drunk out of my fucking mind and what if it was you, so I read the emails and—I deleted your voicemails, I'll admit, but then I thought what if I never heard your voice again and I love you, MacKenzie, I do, and I'm still kind of fucking pissed at you, but that's okay—"

Her eyes are wide and confused, and there's a line of sweat making it's way down the neckline of what appears to be a man's v-neck undershirt, "Will, what are you trying to tell me right now?"

"I didn't know how to do this via email."

"It seems you also don't know how to do this in person, either," she says, eyebrows lifting, cautious. She pauses, raising her hands to wrap her fingers around his wrists, but doesn't remove his hands from her body, and the pounding in his head lessens.

"Ah… _no._ " Her thumbs begin stroking the back of his hands, chasing away any chance of articulation or verbalization he may gain. "It would appear not."

"I'm... sorry if you're sorry," she offers sheepishly, with _that_ smile on her face, before biting down on her lower lip, not quite looking at him anymore. "Not that you-it was my fault, really. I-I don't know what I should have done, really. Probably realized that Brian was never going to be any good for me, and you were."

"I threw you out, didn't give you a chance to—I'm sorry, and—if I had answered your calls sooner, if I had—if I hadn't cut you off, you wouldn't be here, where you could-I don't even— _get stabbed or blown up or shot or—_ "

Her smile falters. "This is _my choice_ , Billy. I'm a reporter. I'm doing the news here, unlike a _certain someone_ who apparently slacks off without me-we _do_ get ACN out here, I'll have you know, not very often but I've—I'm sorry I haven't been there to keep your ass in line. But, yeah. Some people go on vacations to clear their heads… I came to a war." They both linger over that statement for a moment. They need to talk. Not here, but… they do. About a lot of things. But then the moment breaks and Mac smiles again. "But look at you, getting on a plane and chasing me across the world and rambling like this."

His smile is crooked, but he's tired and more than a bit hungover now. "Isn't that how it usually goes in the movies?"

"No," she laughs. "The guy only ever chases the girl to the airport and he catches her before she reaches the terminal. He doesn't wait six months."

"Seven. And, well, we've never been conventional."

Mac laughs, shaking her head. "No, hardly."

He kisses her then, because he thinks he can, and her hands flit from his shoulders to his neck to his hair, and he hasn't forgotten how to do this with her; this thing between them isn't quite broken, even if they've fucked it up a little.

"Thank God," her murmurs against her lips.

She just laughs, shaking her head as she draws him back in for another kiss.

 

* * *

**ii. Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany, June 2009** _  
_**(She forgets to update her paperwork.)**

It doesn't come back to her in any sort of linear fashion—she remembers the flight to Germany, strapped into the back of a military aircraft, and then Jim's face, hovering over hers, haloed by bright, flickering lights, the steady report of a heart monitor, a marine, carrying her to the convoy, Jim holding her hand, promising her _yes, I'll tell Billy you're sorry, I'll tell him, but Jesus Mac, you can't fucking die on me_.

But what happened, exactly, remains out of reach, until she at last opens her eyes and sees Will, haggered, asleep, and unshaved, in the hard plastic chair next to her hospital bed.

_I was stabbed._

To be fair, she hadn't exactly gone into the riot without knowing the potential consequences. It wasn't her first revolt. And she hadn't exactly gone into the riot aiming to be stabbed, or assaulted, or… but rather uncaring of the possible repercussions. Hell, that was the whole fucking reason she asked to be embedded, right? It was a warzone. People got shot every fucking day. Maybe she could be one of them.

The morphine, or maybe even just the very real fact that Will is sitting three feet from her (he wasn't there the first time she woke up, was he?), makes her thoughts seem elevated, above her, outside of her, and everything swirls in some banacchallistic rage for a moment on the ceiling above her, overwhelming constellations of thought and emotion and mostly rage, at herself and universe because she isn't dead and Will is here and she's drugged and very little makes sense, but then something close to her beeps in quick succession and Mac finds herself pressed down back into unconsciousness as pain surges in her abdomen.

The next time she wakes up, he's holding her hand, and brushing the backs of his fingers down her cheek, easing her back into it all.

"Hey you," he whispers, eyes red-rimmed and clothes rumpled, like nothing has happened at all; his fingers on her cheek may be the only thing keeping her from floating off the bed.

She's in pain and confused and it's probably showing on her face, like she could hide very much from Will McAvoy to begin with, except that one thing and well, she just fucking regrets _that_ , right? But she loves him and that's constant and maybe if things right now made a little more sense, like if she could remember what happened with any sort of progression and she was in a little less pain, or her mouth wasn't dry and her eyes didn't feel like sandpaper and she wasn't about to cry, because he's fucking here, and that's the real kicker, and maybe he doesn't hate her after all-

"Hey," she rasps, and tries to pretend that she's not crying and this is so fucking embarrassing; she was the one fucking cheated on him, and she wasn't supposed to be here, she was supposed to be _dead,_ and he wasn't supposed to be _here_ , supportive and kind-faced.

It's been two years, and he hasn't answered her at all. She'd given up, and now he—

"Do you remember what happened?" he asks, voice low and almost afraid.

"I was stabbed," she answers, hollow, pushing out the tiny details until the story is stripped to a single sentence, nothing about her suicidal tendencies or how she really shouldn't have been there, but wanted the story, and wanted to die. But she's lost the right to tell him that. She hurt him first, the scales don't tip that way anymore.

"Six days ago." Will seems intent on filling in the blanks, although not the right ones. Mac couldn't care less, not really, but she wants him to keep talking. It's hard to get _News Night_ out here, and she misses the sound of his voice. There were times, in the beginning, when she'd fall asleep to the broadcast playing on her satellite phone, when they were within reach of a good signal. Then even that got too painful, and him, here and now, is—

"Then they realized that they couldn't get the bleeding to stop in the field, so they airlifted you here."

Mac realizes somewhat faintly that she never removed Will from being her medical proxy. "They had to remove five feet of your small intestine, it had gone necrotic while they had waited, but your prognosis is good. You're…"

He takes her hand where it lays at her side, folds it between both of his own. _We_ , Mac almost thinks he means, cozy within her haze of morphine and self-recrimination, but then chases it away because it doesn't make sense. It doesn't follow the rules.

"You're gonna be fine. The doctors think you'll be okay to transport in a few weeks, and then we'll fly you home, and it's gonna be fine, you can take it slow and get back on your feet."

"Home?" _Such foreign soil._ New York is miles and memories away. She sent herself into exile.

Does Will really want her to go..? Mac doesn't even know if she wants to go home. There's some screaming part of her that says she should just go back to Islamabad with her crew too early, to Molly and Jim and Daniel who have to do what she says, who trust her too much, go back to work too early, keep up this ritual sacrifice of her body to the one thing she hasn't fucked up yet, and work herself into a nervous breakdown. Maybe then she'll be worthy of going _home_ , after she's decimated herself to the point she destroyed Will.

"New York, Mac," he says, as if he hadn't kicked her out of his life, like she hadn't sublet her apartment and shoved all her shit in storage and given that up, too, all the shit she lost when she fucked him over; all the shit she gave up, willingly, _because_ she fucked him over. "Home."

Why aren't all the drugs she's on making this all go away?

And the look on his face is so sweet it's startling, and it isn't like she hasn't dreamt of this moment before, but she's exhausted, under the pain and the IV drip and bandages—she was exhausted before, and maybe it was the exhaustion that made her slip, let the knife find its way into her belly. But still, she has to be sure.

"Will, why are you here?"

Which is silly, really, to ask a man who apparently flew to Germany for her without so much of a change of clothes, if the fact that he's still wearing the same sweater means anything. But she's so fucking tired, has been tired for the past fucking year and she's so fucking done, and her voice wheezes a bit at the end of the question and Mac belatedly realizes she's sobbing, if only from the way her stomach heaving makes the wound burn through all the pain medication they've given her.

She can't even look him in the face when he gathers her in his arms the best he can, and Mac cries harder when she realizes she doesn't even have the strength to lift her arms from where they lay on the hospital bed.

" _God_ , MacKenzie," he says, hushing her, teasing knots out of her hair with careful fingers until she can garner enough will to curl her own into his waist. "I was so fucking scared."

"I'm sorry," she chokes out, because there's nothing left to say, not really. She's sorry about Brian, she's sorry she couldn't explain herself, she's sorry that she hurt him, she's sorry she didn't love him as quickly as he loved her, she's sorry that she ran away, she's sorry she almost died, she's sorry that she didn't die, she's sorry she did this, all of this, to him, she's so sorry she forgot to make someone else her medical proxy and now it's another goddamned fucking thing she did to him, making him make these kinds of decisions for her when her parents live in England, so much closer, she's just so fucking sorry. "I'm sorry, Will."

She should have stayed in New York. She shouldn't have been afraid of happiness in the first place. But Will had been an easy pick—they worked together, he was infatuated with her, he was a big name, Brian couldn't really avoid him, not in their line of work, and honestly, why the fuck did she think it was important to get the upperhand on Brian Fucking Brenner when she had Will McAvoy, who did things like learn how she took her coffee and how she liked her eggs and bashfully shoved his hands into his coat pockets before leaning down to kiss her on the cheek after the first time he took her for coffee.

Who fucking listened, not just because it was a part of a contract, who treated her like a human being, unlike Brian, who made her work for it, made her work for everything that had been so inherent with Will, and maybe she had just punishing herself, or who the fuck even knows. But it's Will she wants, who she should have wanted from the start.

But she-

"I know," he breathes into her hairline, before kissing her forehead, "I know. I know." It's not _I forgive you,_ but MacKenzie thinks rock bottom may feel like this—laughing and sobbing and the stitches on her abdomen pulling and her entire body is hot and cold and nothing makes sense, really, because _drugs_ and her stomach is dropping out and apparently she has five feet less of small intestine than everyone else—so she'll take what she can get, tries to calm herself, pressing her face into his shoulder. "I love you. It's okay. I love you."

He kisses her temple, her cheek, and then throwing aside all reticence, her lips, before framing her face with his hands and pulling back to look her in the eyes.

"We can fix this."

She wants to believe him. She really does. But if she's learned nothing else in her months over here, it's that she needs fixing too, and she doesn't know why, but she does.

Will has good reason to be fucked up. There's a clear progression of events that leads to a logical conclusion of fuckedupness: one abusive alcoholic father, three little siblings, fifteen years of throwing himself between the two before said father leaves; near financial devastation ensues, and her perfectionist genius speeds through college and law school to provide for his mother, his brother and his sisters. Emotional baggage is created and toted around and she wrecks it again for him almost two decades later.

But her?—a lovely childhood amongst diplomats and the international elite, on English manors and American mansions, attending swanky parties and stuffy schools, having every want satisfied by her wealthy, titled parents. She makes as little sense as—as—as differential equations or why Will is sitting in her hospital room, touching her hair and kissing her and saying that he loves her.

Her stomach burns from how tightly she's holding her muscles, tamping down on the sobs that want to escape.

"Why? Why do you even want me?" The words scrape up the back of her throat, a raspy, terrified whisper, and every muscle in her body has gone rigid. It's horror, really. She'll fuck him over again.

She'll fuck him over again and she can't do that and she also can't tell him what's going on in her head, either, that she needs help and she's needed help and he was perfect and she wasn't, _isn't._

"MacKenzie."

"You shouldn't be here." His hands are anchored to her arms, holding her up, and if she had the strength she thinks she'd move them off her, but they might be the only things holding her down on the bed.

"Mac, no—" He looks terrified. She knows, objectively, that she's scaring him right now, that she's scaring herself right now, and she thinks her mind might be collapsing in on itself, condensing all the voicemails, the text messages, the emails into one unstable ball of… of whatever, and she can't do this… she can't… do this.

"I'm not—" _Not what?_

"I'm _here_ , MacKenzie. I'm here, and I'm not leaving, and you're not leaving." Will's yelling, except he's not, because she's in a hospital bed and he's here, in the hospital, with her, and it's enough for the spinning thoughts in her head to stop, and drop to the bottom of the basin. She's crying, but so is he, so she thinks it might be okay; he eases her back down onto the bed, frames her face with his hands.

"You're _not leaving_."

"I love you," she whispers. That never changed, the one fixed point in the center of her increasingly out-of-control thoughts.

A riot. There had been a riot, and Jim had been in her ear screaming at her to move. And she hadn't. There had been chaos, and it had felt right, right up until the moment that the blade slid into her stomach, again and again.

She still can't quite look him in the eye.

"You really think we can fix this? Us?" She swallows, really unable to look him in the eye, but she needs to get the words out, and this, she thinks, is what fucked them over last time. There was a clawing pain in her gut long before someone put a knife in it. "And me. I need— _I need help_."

"It's okay." His voice is thick with emotion, but his hands are steady, thumbs stroking her cheekbones.

He kisses her forehead. "Well, it's not okay, but we'll—we'll get there."

The clock keeps ticking.

 

* * *

**iii.** **Evanston, Illinois, March 2010** _  
_ **(They book rooms in the same hotel.)**

She's looking down at her shoes when the elevator door opens to her floor, which, she learns half a second later, is a critical tactical mistake on her part. Mac should have known that even though the odds of staying in the same hotel as Will, on the same floor as Will, in all of Chicago, were incredibly slim, that _this_ would be the hand fate would deal her.

Although, considering that her $400 an hour therapist says that this (by "this" Mac is not entirely certain if she means her mental state, her non-relationship with Will circa 2007-present, or her strange encouragement of Will's tirade hours earlier) has only gotten so fucked up because she's self-sabotaging and self-punishing to a near-pathological degree, it really only seems fair that the universe should be able to get in on the game too.

That doesn't stop her from scrambling to hit the button to a floor, any floor but this floor, and the doors begin to close on him and for a second Mac thinks she might get away clean, she can always have her luggage in her room shipped back to New York and her plane ticket back is in her wallet already, so really—

Will shoves his arm in front of the closing elevator door, and it slides back open. MacKenzie should have predicted this, really; she spent the past three years running away from him. At some point she would have to stop, and really, what did she expect, after today? _Vertigo medicine_ is already up as ACN's official spin on it, when she knows well and good that she…

He's staring at her. It's a bit of an over-simplification, seeing as he's rather dumbstruck and gaping at her, mouth half-open and a look of complete shock settling in over his features. "MacKenzie?" he asks, still in shock and bit angry, now, too.

She blinks a few times, struggling with something to say, like perhaps a quick regurgitation of all the emails she's sent and voicemails she's left and a small detour to what exactly brought her to hold up her pad with the words _IT'S NOT, BUT IT CAN BE_ written on it, and really, did she expect anything but him to seek her out after this afternoon's debacle.

"Hi, Will," she manages to get out, before he reaches into the elevator and drags her out onto the fourteenth floor of the Four Points Sheraton Chicago.

"I'm sorry," she squeaks next, by reflex, when he doesn't say anything, just puts his hands on his hips and continues to stare at her. "I'm sorry." She wraps her arms around her binder, pulls it to her middle. _I didn't mean to. I didn't think you'd see me. I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to ruin your life. Again. But I—?_ What? Couldn't help herself? "I'm sorry." Bites her lip, looks down at her shoes. What can she say?

"What the _fuck_ are you doing here, Mac?" Will's yelling, but not, but he's doing the thing with his voice he does when he wants to yell, but they're in a hallway and Mac wants to suggest that they go into one of their rooms, but that's his decision, not hers.

There are about a thousand things she could say in response to that.

"I failed my psych evaluation."

She cringes the second the words are out of her mouth, the muscles of her cheeks tightening and flooding with heat; he doesn't deserve her shit, he doesn't have to take her shit anymore. But it's easier, almost, than _because I'm still in love with you and you said you never wanted to see me again so this is all I could think to do, I was in Chicago anyway for an interview and Charlie called, and said you'd be at Northwestern, and I thought maybe it would be like coming up for air, or maybe I could hurt myself more, who knows—_ really, it's easier to deal with _you're exhausted, Ms. McHale, mentally and physically, and a few of your responses concern me, and CNN can no longer allow you to remain in the Green Zone under their employment, I'd advise that you seek psychiatric help_ because there's medication for the second, she can pay $400 an hour to deal with the second; she can never fix the first, she can never make Will love her again and she's fucked everything up and her life has been laying shattered on the floor for three years like a fucking mess and she's so fucking  _tired_ because she's more fucked up than how she started out.

" _What?_ " Will might say, but she's not entirely certain because everything seems so far away.

"I'm sorry," she says again, wraps it around her like a security blanket, eyes steadfastly on her shoes and not on him, but she's noticed that Will's stopped pacing and has just gone back to staring at her again, and suddenly it's like a flood:

"I'm sorry, oh god, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, Will, I'm so sorry, I fucked everything up again, I'm so sorry-"

Something gives way, Mac feels her knees give out from under her and _God, this is pathetic_ , she thinks faintly even though the words _I'm sorry_ are stuck on repeat like her mouth and her brain have formally disengaged and then his hands are under her elbows, keeping her standing. He's saying something, low and repetitive, but it can't quite get through to her, and then he sits her down on what Mac thinks is probably his bed, kneels in front her her, and the duvet is soft under her palms, and Mac clenches her fingers into it, and she thinks she's choking more than breathing at this point, her body collapsing in on herself, and really, she should have known that seeing Will again would do this to her.

He doesn't make her look at him, just worries himself with getting her arms folded behind her head, asking her if there's something she needs to take, and Mac manages to lift her eyes and nothing's processing really; she knows it's Will in front of her, it's Will's face and his mouth is moving and she can vaguely understand the words coming out of his mouth, but it's all rather disjointed and a bit blurry, but she nods. Keeping a hand on her leg, he leans over and rummages through her purse—

Thirty-five minutes later she's lying on top of the covers with her head in his lap, his fingers combing hesitantly through her hair as the Xanax takes over.

"I thought you were a hallucination," he says, hesistantly, after letting her sleep for a bit. Mac doesn't wonder how he knows that she's awake. There are just some things about memory that are inelastic; Mac doesn't think she could ever really forget _him_ , and maybe he can't forget her, either, of course he'd remember how to tell when she's really asleep and when she's faking it.

"What?" she whispers.

"When I saw you, in the crowd. I thought you were a hallucination." His hand stills in her hair; Mac shifts onto her back to look up at him. "When did you get back into the country?" He glances down at her, and then steadfastly looks away, like looking at her is too much for this conversation. She understands.

"Three weeks ago."

"And you're…" he realizes a moment too late that there's no real tactful way to move forward. "What happened, MacKenzie?" He starts combing his fingers through her hair again. "What happened to you?"

He doesn't push her to respond, just keeps combing his fingers through her hair.

"It's gotten out, that I was asked to resign over the psych eval. No one will hire me," she whispers, voice low for no particular reason except that her body is humming with something untenable, and whatever he's doing to her scalp feels good, and she feels safer than she has since she left for Afghanistan in the first place, even these three weeks home. "That's not—that's _not_ a backwards way of asking for a job. I just—I was out here, for an interview, and Charlie called to tell me you were doing a panel at the Northwestern J-school, and I wanted to see you without you seeing me, because I knew you wouldn't want to see me and I didn't want to…"

She's expecting him to lose his temper, and she thinks he might; he's tensed, but he doesn't say anything, probably because she just lost her shit within a minute of seeing him.

"And then, you got the question, and you froze, and I didn't even think about it." She takes a breath before continuing. "I know I fucked over your personal life."

There's a pause there, her brain belatedly making conscious what she must have connected the dots on some unthinking level a few hours ago.

"I'm sorry I ruined your professional one, too." A breath. " _You thought I was a hallucination?_ "

"Vertigo medicine," he mutters, before looking down at her, a little pissed off and a little of what Mac hopes might be concerned. "And you didn't answer the question."

She's tired, bloodstream full of alprazolam, and she doesn't know how to explain to him that he has a good reason to be fucked up and she doesn't, she just is, and she doesn't know how to sleep for more than four hours at a time and it's easier getting shot at than facing what she did to him, to herself, and to them, and why she did it, and why her therapist thinks she did it.

"The answer would potentially have emotionally manipulative qualities to it."

He snorts. "Mac, as long as you're telling me the fucking _truth_ , I don't think I fucking care."

"You don't trust me, though." No one does. No one _should_.

" _MacKenzie_ ," he says, in lieu of a confirmation or denial. Mac doesn't really know what that means.

"It's a fair assumption, Will."

He sighs. "Yeah." And then, on the end of another exhale, "yeah, and you did the producing, but I was the one who did the talking."

She isn't quite sure what he means by that, if it's supposed to have any meaning outside of him absolving her in his way for this afternoon. The surrealism of the fact that she's laying on his bed, with him, falling asleep with her head in his lap is slowly catching up with her, chasing sleep away again just like the threat of constant gunfire or enemy insurgents used to. It should scare her how much that's comforting to her.

" _Tell me_ , Mac."

"Did you read _any_ of my emails?" He makes a disgruntled noise, the kind that means he'd get up and walk away if he had the choice. "No, this is—I need to know, for context. How much you know. Not that you had any— _any_ obligation to, I mean, because—"

"No. I didn't read them."

She already… knew that, she supposes, but the confirmation is a bit of a blow in and of itself.

"Okay," she says, like she's fine.

"Why?" His voice is a bit tight, and Mac wants to hold his hand, she thinks. But Xanax puts her to sleep and maybe she should have warned Will of that before letting him play the White Knight. Not that she really thinks he would have left her out in the hallway to hyperventilate until she passed out, Will's too much of a good person to do that, even to her, but still. She's falling asleep, and it's going to happen relatively quickly.

She frowns up at him.

"My shrink says that my pathological need to punish myself is only outmatched by my pathological need to sabotage all the good things in my life. But out of the two of us, let's be honest, you're the one with a valid reason to be fucked up about relationships, so I'm really just the bitch who ruined your life. Both of our lives." She pauses. "I'm sorry. Nothing happened to me."

"Stop apologizing," he orders gruffly, and Mac thinks he might be close to… something. Crying, maybe, but that seems absurd given the circumstances.

"Why?" She looks up at him openly.

"What did the emails say, Mac?"

She waits a moment before answering, just watching him, like she used to be able to.

"I got stabbed over there, you know?" He flinches; Mac realizes he didn't. She can't tell if it's the exhaustion, the drugs in her system, his hands soothing her-she unconscionably realizes that she's shaking, which is… interesting—or a combination of all three that keeps her mouth moving. "In the stomach. My father managed to keep my name out of the embassy reports. I told Charlie not to tell you. I don't know why I did that. I think so I wouldn't get disappointed when you didn't contact me."

Her eyes drift off a bit, off his face, off him entirely, and she realizes that the corners of her vision are beginning to dim. "I hadn't entirely disabused myself of the notion that you might love me again. Or still. That's not… what the emails said. And now I'm... pretty sure I'm just sabotaging myself right now…"

"Mac?" He touches her cheekbone with his thumb. "Are you feeling all right?"

"What?" Her eyes snap back to him.

Will looks worried, which shouldn't make her as happy as it does. "You're pale."

"My doctor says that the anti-anxiety medication might make my blood pressure drop a bit." She tries to force her body to calm down, gives it a valiant effort, but it mostly makes her more tired.

"Mac, you're _shaking_." He frames her face with his hands, the pads of his fingers skirting under the slope of her jaw; her body sneaks in a shiver in the looping track of shakes.

"Okay, they make my blood pressure drop _a lot_ ," she deflects, sheepishly. She's fairly certain there's no way this encounter could get more… weird, but fortune favors the bold. Or at least those who attempt vainly to control their circumstances, so she tries to keep talking. 

" _Mac._ "

"There are a couple of completely valid explanations for that."

"Like?"

She frowns again, this time because he eases her head out of his lap and onto a pillow, sliding off the bed and shaking out the microfleece throw at the end of it, tucking it around her. "You being nice to me, for one."

He tilts his head in the way that he does during cross-examination of a guest, when the answer doesn't make sense and he thinks he knows what the right answer _should_ be. "You want me to be mean—the self-punishing thing, right." Taking a foot in hand, he eases one shoe off, and then the other. Considering her for a moment, he huffs out a humorless laugh before shaking his head. " _No_ , MacKenzie. I'm not going to be mean to you just because it's what you want."

"I deserve it. Arguably." She wonders if he's going to take her panty hose off as well, remembering more than a few times when they had stumbled back to his apartment after a particularly rough week—Hurricane Katrina, she remembers most clearly—and she had just flopped onto his bed and passed out only to wake stripped down to her underwear and whatever cami she had been wearing under her blouse that day, her discarded skirt, shoes, bra, tights, and shirt folded neatly on top of his dresser.

"Arguably." His tone is neutral, like he's deliberating on the matter as he drifts over towards the bathroom. "You should drink some water."

"I'm fine."

"Neither of us is _fine_. Clearly. Whatever."

"I'm sorry."

"For God's sake, Mac, stop with the _fucking_ apologies." His voice quiets as quickly as it begins to rise. He looks at her softly, then. "As much as I'd _love_ to punish you for today, the words that came out of my mouth were my own. And you were producing, yes, but it was the both us."

"Well… that's what happens when you, specifically, decide to become the Jay fucking Leno of news broadcasting." Mac realizes she really has no clue what the hell she's saying, but keeps talking anyway, because that's always worked out so well for her. "It gets all bottled up, and then rushes out at once at some innocent blonde coed, and you've never been particularly good at holding it in, Billy, I don't know how you've managed the past three years without me."

"Now you're just trying too hard to get me to snap at you and I've made up my mind to be nice to you. I'm punishing you by not punishing you." He gives her that half-crooked smile that she loves, and she melts a bit, even though everything in her mind is more than a bit unsteady and whirly and unsettled.

"We're at exciting new levels here, Billy," she whispers.

" _Yeah_." He looks at her, really looks at her, like he used to, Mac thinks, leaning in the doorway to the bathroom. She doesn't quite know what to make of that, but he disappears into the bathroom to get the glass of water he'd threatened, and by the time he returns, she's asleep.

She wakes up hours later, still clothed and completely disoriented.

"I would have gone."

And with Will still next to her in bed.

"What?" she asks, groggy, the Xanax hangover fogging up her brain.

"If— _if I had known you had been stabbed_ ," he says slowly, as if he's testing out the words over and over again in his head before saying them. "I would have gone to Germany. Without so much as a change of clothes. Or a second thought."

He looks at her, expression guarded and while she can't quite read him as easily as she could three years ago, Mac knows he isn't lying. She's been pushed off a cliff. And he's jumped, and the fall might kill them both. He's desperate, which is good, because that means he hasn't given up.

"Why?"

Her voice cracks a bit, and she pushes herself up onto her elbows to reach for the glass of water he'd left on the nightstand. Mac can feel him watching her as she gulps it down to prevent any other words from coming out of her mouth.

(He watches her hands shake, is what happens, and he leans over to help her hold it steady, before setting it down and cradles her chin in one of his large, warm hands.)

"Because I never stopped loving you," Will tells her, very seriously, eyes wide and vulnerable and unWill-like, and Mac knows what it's costing him to tell her this.

He kisses her forehead, like a benediction.

(It's not, but it can be.)

 

* * *

**iv. Midtown, New York City, New York** , **May 2011** _  
_ **(He overhears her conversation.)**

"It doesn't matter."

Will feels bad, now, bringing Brian here and shoving him in Mac's face, but that's what happens when you don't consult your therapist before making rash decisions about punishing the woman you're desperately in love who doesn't love you back.

Every bone in his body screams out that it's a bad idea. Loving Mac is a bad idea; forgiveness is just the propensity to opening yourself up to get hurt again. He'd learnt that lesson the hard way, the third time his father came home after a two month bender away from his wife and kids, the second time his father wrapped his hands around his mother's throat, the first time he smashed a bottle across his father's face.

(There are two steps in fighting someone much larger than you. The first being: pick up the nearest blunt object that can serve as a weapon, and the second: _swing_.

There is a problem in this process, because MacKenzie is much smaller than him, and even though he doesn't want to hurt MacKenzie, every bone in his body sings out that he needs to protect himself against her. Because unlike with his father, he never conditioned himself away from loving her, so he does stupid petty and not-so-petty shit like buying a ring and bringing Brian Fucking Brenner in to torture her, and apparently, himself.)

"What doesn't matter?"

Eavesdropping is rude; he does it anyway, because the staff has cleared out to Hang Chews after the broadcast, because Brian has Mac cornered in her office after the broadcast and while his reasoning isn't entirely altruistic he _will_ go in there if Brian crosses a line and smash his face into a table like he's wanted to for near-on five years now.

"Whether he _comes back_." He can't really see Mac from his vantage point, but Brian didn't bother to close her door behind him, so he doesn't have to. "I don't care about whether or not Will _comes back_."

His sense of preservation where MacKenzie is involved has always been nil, so he doesn't move, even though he thinks this exchange is about to become extremely painful, but Will wants confirmation on the meaning behind the fact that Mac never said a single fucking thing about the voicemail he left her the night they got Osama.

Brian chuckles. "For some reason I don't entirely believe that."

"Yeah?" He can imagine Mac standing defiantly in front of her desk, arms crossed under her chest, head tilting just so, like she does.

"And it's kind of pathetic, I'll admit, considering how he treats you."

Mac gives a short laugh. "In comparison to what? How you used to treat me?"

Brian snorts. "Yeah, Mac. You're a bad girl, just needing to be punished. That's your MO in relationships."

"Will doesn't punish me," she answers shortly, but Will can hear the doubt in her voice and even though he knows her doubts are entirely valid hearing it from her fucking hurts, knows it puts him in league with Brian Fucking Brenner and now this stupid side-by-side comparison is only making him want to put his hand through a mirror or something equally painful. He's hurt Mac, he's done it before, and some reason he keeps forgetting how much he hates it and hates himself for doing it. "Not... often. Besides, I deserve what I get."  

Brian heaves a sigh. "Okay, so tell me, why don't you care if he comes back? Because you're as pathetically in love with him as you were the day you broke it off with me six years ago."

Mac is still in love with him. Or at least Brian Fucking Brenner thinks so. 

He can hear Mac snap her briefcase closed.

"Will is my partner. And my friend. And you know what? Why I'm so _pathetically in love with him_ , why I left you?" Her voice rises in pitch, but gets quieter. "Why I came back even when I knew I didn't have a shot in fucking hell with him, after Afghanistan?"

"Sure," Brian snaps, and Will suddenly feels very uncomfortable and entirely like a huge douchebag and mostly like he shouldn't be standing there, because this is worse than Mac confirming that she's not in love with him, or is entirely indifferent to him—

"Because he makes things make sense," she says, finally, not entirely with conviction. Not about the sentiment, but the phrasing, Will thinks, because he doesn't know what to think about what she's actually saying, doesn't quite want to go there.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"I follow rules. I'm… annoyingly ethical, you hated it about me," Mac continues, almost brushing that fact aside.

"Jesus Christ, Mac, I was with you for almost a year and a half, I didn't hate—"

"No, you did, you hated a lot things about me but also I was very good about following your—your stupid rules about whatever you thought I should be, or how I should act to be a... good girlfriend, qualify for 'wife material' or whatever because I didn't know who the fuck I was so it was easy, to follow your rules and be completely in the—the—the dark, or whatever, about myself and just get validation from you patting me on the head saying good job, even if I had to hide myself from you. And resent myself for not measuring up."

She pauses then, and Will can tell she's getting worked up, and trying not to be, not in front of Brian.

"And who told you this?" Brian interjects snidely.

"No one. My therapist," Mac answers, and then somehow that becomes a vaulting point. "And then you dumped me, again, and then I got called to sub for Will for a week, and then he asked me out for coffee, and then dinner, and you _came back_ and I don't know what the _fuck_ was wrong with me, honestly, but Will was a good enough patsy because he didn't expect the worst in me and I was fucked up enough to use him because he was nice and liked me and it was irritating to you—so maybe you're right, I did cheat on _you_ with _Will_ and not the other way around—and somewhere along the line things started _making sense_. So I left you. For the guy who made things make sense, because he didn't make up _stupid rules_ about who I should be and while that was kind of fucking terrifying, that—that clarity, that's a ridiculous word for it but I don't care, it was really fucking nice to be in love. And with someone who actually loved _me_."

"That's a load of shit," Brian scoffs, and Will is rooted to the spot, wondering if _this_ was what was in Mac's emails. "If nothing else, you two have some fucked up codependence issue—"

She snorts, and cuts him off. "Yeah, it's a load of shit and that's why I'm here, _five years_ after Will threw me out on my ass."

He thinks she might be crying. Fuck, he thinks _he_ might be crying.

"Fuck," Brian says, kind of angry and kind of defeated.

"Yeah," she murmurs. And then, louder, "I'm in love with him. And it's not pathetic. Because my relationship with him means everything to me whether or not we're in a romantic relationship. He's my friend. He's my partner. He—"

"Makes things make sense," Brian finishes, back to being surly. "Adorable. I'll be sure to put that in the piece."

"You never even bothered to learn how I liked my eggs. Or took my coffee," she mutters.

"Scrambled," Brian says a moment later, confidently. 

_No,_ Will thinks immediately.

Mac laughs again, a sound that is two parts incredulous and one part spite. "That's how _you like_  your eggs, Brian."

Did Mac just not get the voicemail? Will wonders. Or maybe she did, and thought that responding to him since he was high would be taking advantage. She _is_ annoyingly ethical, she'd probably think it was taking advantage of him. Hell, if Mac left him some rambling voicemail while she was drunk off her ass he'd probably give her the benefit of pretending it never happened. But no, if she'd heard it, she'd know that he—he can't really expect her to figure out all the intricacies of his fucked up mind when he couldn't even read her emails, so he puts a stop to that train of thought.

"Shit, Mac, it's been six years, how the fuck do you expect me to remember? I bet even _Prince Charming_ doesn't fucking remember how you take your fucking coffee, or like your fucking _eggs_ —"

For some reason, _this_ is what gets Will to move, maybe just because it's so fucking stupid or because he can't fathom Brian not even caring enough to learn how Mac takes her coffee, or likes her eggs cooked, and for some reason his mind goes to the time she was so wrecked after the week they covered Katrina that he convinced her to stay in his bed all day and made her a grilled cheese with at least eight dollars worth of Jarlsberg cheddar. Or maybe it's what had him _this close_ to booking a flight to Landstuhl after he heard she had been stabbed, a week after the fact, before losing his nerve and this is a lot closer than Germany, so he doesn't have the time for to lose it, and he's at the door of her office before he even realizes.

"Half and half, just enough to cut the bitterness, one sugar. And she likes her eggs over light."

The words are soft, but said with conviction, and out of his mouth before he realizes. He gains back enough cognizance to not tack on _you jackass_ to the end of that statement, or, _runny, and on toast_ , to be more specific. His mind is assaulted by the image of MacKenzie wearing nothing but one of his t-shirts, sitting on top of counter on the island in his old kitchen, at his old apartment, smiling and crinkling her nose at him while mopping up egg yolk with day-old sourdough.

And he realizes this is him, coming back.

Brian looks like he doesn't quite know how he walked into this situation, but Will's eyes are on Mac, who has busied herself with hiding in her hair and staring at her Louboutins.

"I can see I'm done here," Brian mumbles, before stalking out past him.

Will and Mac stand there silently for the better part of a minute, Mac crossing her arms under her chest and sniffling awkwardly. Will doesn't know what to say, now that he's gone and made himself vulnerable, so he shoves his hands into his pockets and waits for her to say something, or kick him out of her office, or something.

"How long were you standing there?" she asks finally, almost sheepish but kind of afraid too, and he doesn't like it.

"Long enough."

"Well," Mac concedes, trying to paste nonchalance onto her face, to diminish everything he just heard, "it's nothing you probably didn't already know."

That angers him, because no, if he knew he wouldn't be—he wouldn't—

"Shit, Mac!" She looks up, startled. "You think if I already _knew all that_ that I wouldn't—that _we_ wouldn't—"

"Wouldn't what?" she whispers, eyes too wide, and then loses her confidence and looks down at her shoes again, biting her lip and it's too much, it's entirely too much—

There was something that Will had learned young, after being thrown into walls and hearing his sister scream after their father pulled them across the floor by their hair, after watching his mother and little siblings try to fade into the wallpaper like ghosts. Something that taught him how to pick up the nearest blunt object, make it into a weapon. The force that made him strong enough to pick up the empty bottle and break it across his father's face.

"You know what the trick of it is?" he asks her quietly, and she looks up at him through her bangs.

It's the same thing that almost put him on the flight to Germany, that made him open his mouth at Northwestern, that made him throw out the rundown, that made him come in here tonight.

_"What?_ " she asks, confused, but at least she's looking at him again with her big brown eyes, those documented weaknesses of his.

"Don't be afraid anymore."

(It's not like forgiving his father. It's like deciding to start to fighting back.)

"Will?"

He crosses the space from the door to her office (further in, really, but he hadn't noticed himself drifting towards her) to her in three paces, and her face is under his hands in the moment after that, and Mac's looking up at him with her big brown eyes, and he strokes her cheekbones with his thumbs because she's letting him.

"I love you too. You were spectacular tonight." He probably shouldn't repeat the whole voicemail back at her, and there's no dawning comprehension in her eyes, so maybe she really just didn't get it and he's a massive douchebag, but he's trying not to think of that right now. "You're spectacular every night. And I love you too."

"Billy?" she asks wondrously, a slow smile breaking across her face like dawn, the crinkles around her eyes and nose coming back and she bites her lip so he kisses her, nibbling on it, sucking it between his lips before slanting his mouth against hers properly. 

"How did you remember how I take my eggs?" she murmurs into his mouth a moment later, lips half a breath from his.

He sighs into her, before pulling back again to answer. He's coming back. "Because I never _stopped_ loving you."

Besides, he knows the feeling.

(Maybe the absence of fear isn't bravery. It's clarity.)

Things never made sense without her.

 

* * *

**v. Tribeca, New York City, New York, September 2012** _  
_**(They retract Genoa; he doesn't want to be alone.)**

She can't stop crying. Will has already decided it's not a case of _won't_ , it's definitely _can't_ , and it's scaring the fuck out of him because he's never seen MacKenzie this out of before, even after The Thing That Happened, and he didn't have to deal with it then, because his way of dealing with it was kicking her out of his apartment and he's here to deal with it now, because he wants to be here, because last time she ran all the way to Peshawar to escape it and he doesn't know what she'd do now.

But he's hoping that he can be enough of what she needs to keep her from doing it.

He had gone to her to see if she had wanted to get a drink (or seven or eight, blackout drunk really might have been the goal) after the retraction. And found her sitting behind her desk, arms wrapped around her middle, body shaking in around herself in an attempt to stave off hyperventilation.

He'd gotten her into his apartment before it'd truly started, and she'd collapsed into him crying how sorry she was, and he had watched her shut down completely, the words _I'm sorry_ strung along on repeat while everything else washed out like it was the rain beating against one of apartment's floor-to-ceiling windows. 

He gives her some of his expired Xanax because he doesn't know what else to do, honestly, and gets her into the shower and she pulls him in with her, and it's not like they have boundaries anymore, haven't for a while, because it's kind of stupid and unnecessary to pretend that they haven't seen each other naked in every way that matters. Will thinks that he had had boundaries with MacKenzie for a bit, three years and then some but the past few months he thinks they've gone all away without him really noticing, since Nina, and Sloan's speech about Goldilocks planets and he did know what she was talking about, after all, which is how he finds himself holding a naked, sobbing MacKenzie under the spray of his shower, stroking rivulets of water down her back.

And he thinks: this shouldn't have blindsided him.

He realizes, her face pressed into chest, how far they've fallen, and it wasn't quick at all. He loves her, not a question, but all he has been able to give her is thorny uncertainty; you do not destroy the one that you love. And it's not like he was the one to… no, that was Dantana; but Mac had paid him back and put the pieces back together, and he hadn't paid her back in kind, had instead rendered her vulnerable to this, made apathy his ally and let her inhale guilt like air.

_How long, MacKenzie?_ is the question, how long had he let his love for her blind him to _this_. He wants to love all of her, he _does_ love all of her, without question. How bad, how far, how long?

(He's standing by.)

After a time, however long it takes for her to stop shaking, to just breathe, Will turns the water off, tugs Mac into the echoing bathroom (he hears water dripping, her breaths and his, the vent going) and wraps a towel around shoulders, before drying himself off and heading off to his closet to grab something for them to wear.

(He remembers lazy weekends she spent in his clothes, and he thinks that no one's ever really owned space in his head like Mac does, and he still doesn't know why it's her, but it's her, she was the one who got through and stayed, even when she was halfway across the world. And for a while all that did was piss him off, but now he's just glad that he has someone who understands how his head works. He remembers a lot of things, and wonders if slipping into a relationship with Mac would be like putting on old clothes.)

(He doubts it would be that easy. They can't go back. And he's not sure if he wants to, anymore. He likes the people that they are now, wouldn't give up everything they've gone through together since. Just maybe some of the things he's done since.)

He pads back into the bathroom after tugging on a pair of pajama pants and an undershirt; she's standing in the same spot she was when he left, eyes red and face flushed, her fingers digging into the terrycloth so hard that her knuckles have turned white. Sways, when he pries it from her grip and towels her off, eyes following him for the first time in over an hour.

"Sorry," she whispers, blinking up at him.

He doesn't get mad—feels the specter of anger, but it's mostly directed at himself—just takes a finger and presses it to her soft lips. _Don't be_ seems stupid, so does _it's okay_ , because it's not fucking okay, and telling her not feel something is probably what got them in trouble in the first place. Or her. MacKenzie's in his head but he's no longer certain he know what's going on in hers.

"We'll be okay," he rasps, and the room is too hot, cloying, really. It's been a long day near the end of a pretty good year, by his standards, and fuck it all.

It looks like for a moment like Mac wants to say something, and she bites her lip at him, but then thinks better of it, and nods. Will hands her back the towel and she dries off her hair and then drops it to the floor, letting it pool around her feet. He rolls up the hem of the t-shirt in his hands, and she catches on quickly enough, raising her arms and letting him slip it over her head.

Ot comes to the middle of her thighs; she's physically small, but has always found ways to make him forget that. She's stronger than him, in a lot of ways. The ways that matter to him, the ones that fill up the broken spaces with gold and put him together and animate his bones.

He has to be that for her.

It matters.

"Come on," he says, and puts her in his bed. They ease back together in the darkness, rain pattering on the windows in his bedroom, the ambient city lights on her face, cool sheets around their skin.

She doesn't protest, and they tentatively curl around each other. The tears are back, but not as violent, as choking, as they were before. She doesn't fight them this time, and he wipes them away as they come.

"I don't think I can sleep," she whispers nervously, a bit panicked, but also exhausted. "I don't think—"

"Okay." He remembers how to hold her, because its muscle memory, his body can't forget her, and he murmurs it into her forehead, damp hair under his mouth. "Okay, okay, okay." Her breath hitches against his chest and she wraps a leg around his, an arm under his shoulder, like she's trying to crawl into him.

"I fucked up, I fucked it up," she whispering.

Smashing a bottle across his father's face seems simple compared to this, but he's fighting for her.

"We fucked up, Mac. We all fucked up." She's not alone in this. He won't let her be left alone, bleeding out by herself. "Dantana fucking cooked the interview. Maggie stepped out of the room. Charlie and I didn't realize we had the same source. Jim wasn't there to call out Cyrus West. No one followed up on the tweets. Sweeney didn't disclose the TBI. You gave Valenzuela leading questions. We all fucked it up, Mac. And we're gonna get through it. I'll be here. And if you can't sleep, then I'll be here all night."

Standing by.

"Okay?"

He wants her to answer him. She has to understand this. He's not gonna kick her out again, he's not gonna hurt her. Never again.

He lifts her chin to look her in the eye, and he hates the way her chin is trembling, how she's starting to shake again. "Okay, MacKenzie?"

Shadows move across her face. Eyes puffy and red, face distraught, her mouth moves around a few aborted attempts at a response, before finally whispering back, "Okay."

_I love you_ , he almost says, but doesn't. Not tonight. He doesn't know what they are, tonight, but he won't heap anything else onto her head. He can hold her while she tries to sleep. And he does, refamiliarizing himself with the texture of her hair, the run of skin from her knee to her waist, and at some point she drifts off into fitful sleep with her hands clutching his shoulders.

She turns in his arms, sighing harshly even in slumber, and his hands find their way under her shirt. His thumb isn't drawn to it; instead he apprehensively feels his way up soft skin, flinching when he finds the ragged scar he knew he'd find.

(Charlie had told him, a week after she'd been transported to Germany, had been told by an old friend he knew someone on the ground covering the riots. Will doesn't know how Mac managed to keep it off the wire reports, but he can't forget sitting in Charlie's office, thinking about how he could have found out she was dead, a week late. How he thinks he might have gone, a week earlier, if he had gotten the phone call, if it had come down the wire.)

Sleep doesn't come for him, and at some point he remembers ( _remember_ not being the exact word, because he didn't actually forget how the curve of her hip fit under his palm or the feel of rough patches of skin on her elbows, or any of it, it just got concealed by more pressing facts that no longer seem pressing) that he _can_ get into her head—

The emails.

_I tried to contact you_.

They're in an old account, long abandoned, but Will remembers the password. She came back. It's belated, but it's the least he can do.

He reaches for his BlackBerry, and logs in. And then almost sits up, squinting at the screen in confusion.

The newesr email is a week old.

(She never stopped. She just stopped thinking he'd want to listen.)

It's a long night ahead of him, with MacKenzie in his arms, both her body and her mind. And he'd be lying if he said that he isn't a little afraid. Not of her, not anymore. For them, maybe. But he can't be afraid of her anymore.

He reads the emails.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
